Lone crusader: David Thornley and the intellectuals Edward Thornley (Ashfield Press, €21.50) ISBN 9789068798 The premature death of David Thornley in June 1978 deprived Ireland of a significant intellectual best known for his current affairs work on RTÉ’s Seven Days programme and as a Labour TD for Dublin North-West from 1969 to 1977. Unseated … Read more
The men will talk to me: Kerry interviews by Ernie O’Malley Cormac K.H. O’Malley and Tim Horgan (eds) (Mercier Press, €19.99) ISBN 9781856359528 The title of this collection conveys the point that, as a highly respected IRA veteran, Ernie O’Malley had unique access to his former comrades when in the late 1940s and early … Read more
Murphy’s later years were mainly spent in combating partition and conscription. The redoubtable lord mayor of Dublin (1917–24) Laurence O’Neill, a supporter of Larkin, described Murphy as the outstanding personality of the National Convention of 1917. He knew what was at stake and bent all his ability to bring unionists and nationalists together in a … Read more
Sir,—I write to register some disagreement with Daniel Downer’s article ‘Irish attitudes to slavery during the American Civil War’ (HI 21.3, May/June 2013). First, the argument is somewhat of a straw-man construction. No one has doubted that many, and probably most, Irish emigrants to the US in the Civil War era took an extreme white … Read more
Sir,—Your editorial (HI 21.2, March/April 2013) on Pope Benedict XVI was factually incorrect, unbalanced and more of an emotional rant than a reflective opinion piece. What evidence is there that Benedict XVI ‘carefully choreographed his elevation to the papacy in 2005’? Perhaps most surprising is your contention that the Normae de gravioribus delictis 2010 were … Read more